“Saturn”

For some, the grandeur of the cosmos has always begged for a soundtrack. Four years ago, Sufjan Stevens, the National’s Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, and James McAlister attempted to compose one with Planetarium, a suite of baroque-rock songs inspired by the Milky Way. They toured Planetarium around the world—string quartet, horn section, and full rock band in tow. Now, the group has reunited to re-record these songs for an album out later this year. “Saturn,” the first single, isn’t so much the epic space music you might expect, but something made for the smaller scale universe of your local planetarium.

On paper, the song should theoretically work. The four collaborators share a love for theatricality appropriate for making such serious subject matter palatable. And in the earlier, more formal permutations of this song, there was an opulence to the sound they crafted that felt pitch-perfect. Instead of reproducing that feeling on this new version of “Saturn,” they’ve traded in starry-eyed wonderment for something that’s a little more self-serious than they might’ve intended. Sufjan takes the lead, modifying his soft-focus voice with a metallic Auto-Tune. He’s surrounded by tight repetitions of synth chords that feel instantly familiar to anyone who’s watched a movie on SyFy late at at night. None of it really coalesces—Sufjan’s delivery is too dramatic, the instruments too cloying. The lyrics, a potential high point for such a storyteller as Stevens, are a mish-mash of cannibalism, “vampire creatures,” his self-professed “evil,” love, and of, course, “invisible people.” There is an almost tin-hat paranoia to these lines, and it’s hard to tell if it should be a joke, or if the space-mysticism of it all should be taken seriously. It seems Planetarium is going to be less 21st Century: A Space Odyssey and more X-Files.